There are various known types of modelling concepts of physical construction toy sets. Especially, concepts using modular or semi-modular concepts are very popular as they provide an interesting and challenging play experience. Typically, these concepts provide a set of pre-manufactured elements or building blocks that can be interconnected with each other in some predetermined way according to modules of the pre-manufactured elements. The pre-manufactured elements resemble well-known objects adapted to a specific modelling task. Thus in e.g. building a model of a house the elements may resemble wall bricks, roof tiles, doors, and windows. The object of selecting the elements in this way is that the work involved with the building of a model of a house is reduced significantly compared to a situation where all details of the house are to be defined each time a new model should be made. However, the complete freedom in building a house or another object is traded off for the simplicity of building the model. For the purpose of the present description the building blocks of such a toy construction set will also be referred to as construction elements or simply “bricks”.
For example, the toy construction sets available under the name LEGO comprise a plurality of different types of interconnectable building blocks having protrusions and corresponding cavities as connecting elements. The connecting elements are arranged according to regular grid patterns, thereby allowing a wide variety of interconnections between building blocks.
Typically, such toy construction sets comprise a set of building blocks suitable for creating one or more building block models, e.g. an animal, a robot, or another creature, a car, an airplane, a spaceship, a building, or the like. Typically, a construction set further includes printed building instructions or assembly instructions that illustrate how to construct a certain model from the building blocks of the set. Nevertheless, it is an interesting feature of such construction sets that they inspire children to create their own models.
Typically, the building instructions enclosed in a toy construction set comprise a sequence of pictures illustrating step by step how and in which order to add the building blocks to the model. Such building instructions have the advantage that they are easy to follow, even for children without great experience in toy construction sets and/or without reading skills.
US patent application 2004/0236539, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference, discloses a process for maintaining a repository of virtual toy construction models where users may upload their own virtual construction models, view and download their own uploaded models and models uploaded by other users. The above prior art process further provides functionality for generating a bill of materials for a selected model as well as building instructions such that the user may construct a physical toy construction model of which he/she found a virtual model in the repository. The process even provides functionality that allows a user to order the physical construction elements required to construct the model.
However, it remains a problem of providing an improved selection mechanism for selecting toy construction models that may be interesting for a user to download.